Still left on your dial

Something happened the other day in New York City that should matter to Americans everywhere. In a crowded union hall near Times Square, the only national media network surviving with no corporate funding managed to pull itself from the brink of destruction. The Pacifica radio network, with stations in Washington, D.C., Houston, Los Angeles and—most famously—Berkeley, California, was retaken by its listeners and board members.

The Pacifica network, with affiliate stations as close to Sacramento as KDVS 90.3 in Davis, had for years been under threat of being censored for the sake of higher ratings, and sold to the highest bidder. But a groundswell of grassroots support from listeners, and from prominent lefties like Noam Chomsky, Ralph Nader and Studs Terkel, helped install a number of new national board members to make listener-friendly decisions and keep this national treasure alive for all our benefit.

Why should this matter to the people of Sacramento, a community only partially served by KDVS, a station that’s only ever carried a minimal amount of Pacifica programming? Well, it’s the principle of the matter. Even if you are out of Pacifica earshot, even if you hate what the programmers say on the Pacifica network, even if your politics are diametrically opposed to the admittedly radical leftist rhetoric that makes up the majority of Pacifica programming, you have to concede that the value of having a national network of radio stations broadcasting 20 or 30 hours of uncensored call-in comment from its listeners every week cannot be measured in dollars.

Our Constitution and Bill of Rights deign to promise an open democracy. Pacifica radio is the only national media network trying to deliver it. In this era where “public” television airs commercials for Chevron, where “public” radio is brought to you by Archer Daniels Midland and General Electric, Pacifica stands alone as a network of individuals dedicated to broadcasting voices which would never otherwise be heard, taking no money from corporations who would love to pollute your airtime to have their names heard.

Congratulations to the new interim Pacifica national board members, and to all the pie-eyed idealists who helped install them. Their struggle goes to prove what patriot Wendell Phillips said in a speech before the Massachusetts Antislavery Society in 1852: “The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.”